....looking into the long snouty concerned faces of my
dragon godparents,who I hadn't seen since I was eight years old.
My dragon godparents ?
You betcha !
I'd been born in the Year of the Dragon by the Chinese
astrological numbering system
so not surprisingly when my human godparents had failed to
arrive for my christening
on October 7th 1767 Vicar Lambe
had been concerned that on top of
-the collapsed state of Saint Cuthberts Monastery
-the rise in unexplained incidents in Doraburgshire that year
-the lack of progress in the Revenuers in dealing with tea taxes
That the lack of godparents at my christening was going to damn my immortal English soul.
So there had been the frustrated Vicar Lambe,my crestfallen
parents Jethro and Elspeth in the rebuilt chapel section of
the ruined monastery and the frustrated Vicar had shouted
to the Heavens as he stamped his feet in a little circle
around the Baptismal Font
"Will NO ONE come forward to be this babes godparents?"
screamed the Vicar,who was finally on the point of nervous collapse from the ruinous state of his parish.
I,being a nigh nearborn infant just kept bawling away
as the Vicar began to weep and my dad the ex privateer captain
just stood there stonefaced,trying to distract himself from the scene unwinding before him by
glancing at some of the still intact stained glass windows that surrounded this little unruined part of Saint Cuthberts Monastery.
Dad ,noticing that one particular set of stained glass seemed to
have a pair of dragons set in glass in the window,basically
two medieval looking dragons battling a pair of elephants whilst
King Arthur stode near by in the art piece
mentioned this particular stained glass window to the Vicar.
The Vicar wiped the tears from his eyes,sniffed a little from his
snuffbox and then,seeing the image in glass of the two medieval
dragons,swept his hand towards them in a grand flourish as he
said
"Good Dragon Sir and Missus Dragon,will you not come forth to
be the godparents for little John Crabb,newborn son of
Captain Jeb Crabb ? "
Over the centuries my parents have given me various versions
of what happened next but the most plausible one was that
the stained glass dragons turned into the real thing leading to
the entire north wall of the Monastery collapsing with a roar of
falling brick,stone and rotted timber
and there stood my dragon godparents,coming forward to
accept the Vicar's challenge.